


She is the Sun

by Spark_Writer



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/F, Falling In Love, Fem!Sherlock Holmes - Freeform, Femlock, First Kiss, Genderswap, Sexual Tension, fem!john watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-27
Updated: 2014-05-27
Packaged: 2018-01-26 18:31:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1698329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spark_Writer/pseuds/Spark_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is in love with her flatmate. This is a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	She is the Sun

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first genderswap fic, so please be kind. Feedback is always appreciated, my dears.

 

 

It happens in an instant. John is pelting madly after Sherlock, dodging the path of several whizzing bullets, then the sleuth is tumbling over an unseen precipice and plummeting out of sight without a sound.

 

John’s brain goes offline. She registers someone shouting and swearing, and surmises that it must be herself, but her head is swimming and her pulse is thrashing and everything is suddenly very, very dark. Her wrenched ankle aches as she stumbles through the shadows, stopping short just before the edge of a nasty six foot drop onto the exposed cobbles of an alleyway.

 

_Don’t be dead don’t be dead don’t be dead don’t be dead don’t be dead if you are I shall have to kill you you goddamn fucking madwoman—_

 

John drops to her knees and peers downward. Sherlock is sprawled on the pavement like a great white spider, eyelids fluttering, hair out of its customary bun and tangled about her pallid face in thick tangles. A nearby streetlamp throws her wounds into alarming relief and John sucks in a breath as she takes in the blooming bruise on Sherlock’s forehead and carmine trickle on her left cheekbone.

 

“Shit,” she declares, and Sherlock heaves herself into a sitting position, groaning.

 

“Don’t move, I’m coming back u—“

 

“Oh, fuck no,” says John. “You’re staying exactly where you are or so help me god I will call Greg and tell him to organize a drugs bust at Baker Street right now.”

 

“Fuck off,” Sherlock replies, trying to wipe away the blood and only succeeding in smearing it across her skin like a particularly morbid sort of war paint. “You wouldn’t.”

 

“You sorely underestimate me, then,” says John, and without further ado, swings her legs over the edge and drops to her feet on the grimy flagstones.

 

A jolt of pain shoots through her right calf, but she clenches her jaw and bends to inspect her flatmate’s battered limbs.

 

“Stay still,” she growls when Sherlock tries to wave her off. “You’re going to be in enough pain without jarring any potentially fractured bones.”

 

“Nothing’s broken.”

 

“You’re not the fucking medical expert,” says John, taking hold off Sherlock’s shoulders as gently but firmly as possible and lowering her back to the pavement. “I’m attempting to perform an examination and it would be fantastic if you would shut the hell up. Or try, at the very least.”

 

Sherlock lifts her chin and gazes up at the scarce collection of stars visible through London’s urban haze. She smirks after a moment.

 

“What?” asks John, running her practiced hands along Sherlock’s knee cap.

 

“I’m just imagining what onlookers must be thinking.”

 

John glances to the left, to the right, and sees no one. “There aren’t any,” she observes. The remark makes little sense until she sees the obscenity in the situation; a bloodied, alabaster figure sprawled on the pavement like a dark angel beneath her touch, moaning and writhing in exaggerated spasms of pain. Blood rushes to her face and she tightens her grip on Sherlock’s ankle, pressing her thumb hard against the Achilles tendon.

 

“Goddamnit,” hisses Sherlock, twisting away from her grasp.

 

“Procedure,” John murmurs, giving the tendon another knead before removing the slim Oxfords from the detective’s feet and taking them into her lap, pale and icy.

 

“Surely you don’t need to inspect every millimetre of my body,” Sherlock says. She wiggles her toes against John’s upper thigh.

 

“I told you to shut the hell up. Do you or do you not possess ears?”

 

“Yes. Doctor.”

 

“Cock,” mutters John.

 

“Oh, please. Don’t be puerile.”

 

“I’m not the one who fell off a sodding building.”

 

Sherlock pushes herself onto her elbows, glaring hard at John. “You should have continued pursuing the killer.”

 

“And what, left you here with a shattered skull in a puddle of your own blood? Even I’m not that much of an idiot.”

 

At that moment, the mobile in John’s pocket vibrates and she extracts it from its nest of leather.

 

> _The murderer just turned himself in. Sick fuck got shot in the abdomen. Looks like your work. Break the news to Sherlock gently, alright?_
> 
> _GL_
> 
>  

John’s heart falls four stories. Disappointing Sherlock is not on the evening’s agenda.

 

“Who was that?” Sherlock is staring heavenward again, neck all aglow in the amber streetlight.

 

“Er, Lestrade.”

 

“Additional evidence?”

 

John makes the mistake of hesitating.

 

“ _Damn it.”_

 

“Your inbox is teeming, I’m sure there’s something else—“

 

“The first time in three weeks I wasn’t bored. _Damn_ it all to _hell_.”

 

“I know. I’m sorry,” John murmurs, somewhat helpless. “I’m calling a cab, yeah? Stay where you are.”

 

She leaves Sherlock in the alley, head ringing with endless, pale legs and burning eyes and _not gay not gay not gay._

 

***

 

Sometimes, when John is trying to work, Sherlock does things. Strange things.

 

Like put her sock clad feet in John’s lap—or more commonly, her curly head—stare up at her with narrowed eyes and a faintly bemused expression, as though contemplating the world’s most intricate locked room mystery, pester her with indelicate questions (“What is your blood type, John? I would peg you as Type O based on your diet, but I have no empirical evidence.” Or, “Might I have I have some of your menstrual fluids this week? I want to see how yours compares to mine. Clotting, chemical reactions, interactions with various types of solutions, effects of freezing and boiling…. With your permission, I expect I’ll put the results up on the website.” Or, “On average, how much fluid would you say you dispense when urinating?”), and run her acid-scarred fingertips along John’s wrist, as if cataloging the feel of the ulna and tendons.

 

John does not know what to make of this, except that Sherlock is a sociopath. And in the months they’ve known each other, this has become an umbrella explanation for the women’s endless string of quirks, oddities, and alarming habits.

 

“You ought to stop asking such brash things,” John murmurs one Thursday evening, doing her best to ignore the pair of inquisitive halcyon eyes gazing up at her from her lap as she blogs.

 

“You love it,” says Sherlock, fiddling with the nicotine patch on her slender forearm.

 

John doesn’t know how to reply to that, because it’s… Well, true. Which is more than a little disconcerting. Sherlock invades both her space and her privacy; mercilessly, boldly, _often_. If it were anyone else, John would long ago have told them to fuck off and threaten to flay the skin from their bones should they disregard her order.

 

She has done none of this with Sherlock, however.

 

It’s odd. More than.

 

It’s like the planets have rearranged themselves and the sky’s turned green and clocks have all begun ticking backward.

 

***

 

Sherlock strides into the sitting room one morning wearing her satin dressing gown and very obviously nothing else, talking angrily on her mobile to Lestrade.

 

John swallows and trains her eyes on the crinkled newsprint in her hands.

 

She stays in her chair, rigid, until Sherlock disconnects the call and stalks into the bathroom for a shower.

 

 _Then_ John goes to her room, locks the door, drops onto the bed, slips a hand into her trousers, and rubs herself to release, trying very hard to think of nothing at all.

 

***

 

“You’re such a child,” John snaps, glaring daggers at the lump of blue fabric and dark curls upon the sofa. “That’s the third time you let toxic substances contaminate our food. Of course you got a lecture from me. Imagine if I hadn’t noticed! It’s dangerous as hell and I’m angry, yeah? Jesus.” She plucks her coat from the table and wrenches it on. A glance at her watch tells her she’s going to miss her date altogether if she doesn’t get her arse out of the flat and into a cab pronto. “That doesn’t give you an excuse to act like a massive tit.”

 

“Oh,” mutters Sherlock. She sounds strangely out of breath and turns to stare at John over her shoulder. “ _That’s_ why you think I’m—?”

 

John blinks. “Am I wrong?”

 

Sherlock just looks at her. “You’re going to be late,” she remarks after a few heartbeats.

 

“I—yes,” John murmurs. She leaves without another word.

 

When John arrives home in the dim incandescence of London’s pre-dawn light, Sherlock is asleep at her desk, John’s jumper pillowed beneath her cheek.

 

***

 

 “That can’t be true. The woman’s neck has got strangulation marks, see, and her hair is—“

 

“I know I’m asking for a miracle here, but might you _shut up_?” Sherlock snarls, and Anderson scowls at her. “It wasn’t strangulation. You’ll see when the results for her blood return that this was indeed poisoning.”

 

“She’s right,” adds John, folding her arms across her chest. Sherlock fairly beams at her. “The strangling was done post-mortem. That much is obvious.”

 

“Right, well, excuse me.” Anderson lifts his hands in a gesture of feigned repentance. “I bow to your superior wisdom. Raging pair of dykes,” he adds under his breath, as he steps past John to duck under the yellow crime tape.

 

What happens next is John’s left knee connecting with Anderson’s solar plexus and yelp of pain from the latter.

 

“What the h—“

 

“Let’s get this crystal fucking clear, alright?” John’s pressing him to the wall, fingers clenched in his lapels. “Sherlock and I are not dating, but if we were it wouldn’t be any of your bloody business. The problem here isn’t you calling me and her gay for each other, because that’s of no concern, but the fact that you’re apparently a filthy homophobic with a dick the size of Van Rosenhof’s amoeba who thinks it’s okay to go around spewing pejorative bullshit.”

 

She turns away, kneecap throbbing.

 

Where all was chaos previously, a pin dropping would now sound like a lead pipe hitting the floor.  John stares at everyone in turn, practically daring them to object to this statement.  The reactions are, to say the least, mixed.  DI Dimmock looks dyspeptic, Sally horrified, Lestrade amused, and Sherlock may as well have witnessed a stellar explosion.

 

“Right,” John says, calmly. She looks at Sherlock. “You were saying?”

 

***

 

Three days later, Sherlock stops in the middle of Vivaldi’s _Winter_ and tosses her bow aside.

 

“Something the matter?” John swipes her finger through the simmering pasta sauce and licks it off.

 

“The other day, to Anderson, you said it would be of no concern if we were… Romantically entangled.”

 

“Mm, yes.”

 

“Is that true?”

 

“Well, obviously.”

 

“Ah.” Sherlock studies her for a moment, unblinking, and swallows. John follows the motion with her gaze, watching the porcelain throat bob.

 

“Does that surprise you?” she asks, grave.

 

“There’s always something,” Sherlock replies, and her expression is blinding. It is _you are just as beautiful I ought to have expected but didn’t._

 

“Always,” John echoes, but she doesn’t really know what this means, what any of it means, and Sherlock is suddenly standing in front of her and very tall and blocking everything else out like a swarm of shrieking ravens obscuring the sun, except she _is_ the sun, John thinks stupidly; there’s really nothing else to compare her to but something resplendent, something radiant, something extraordinarily, penetratingly bright.

 

_Fuck the world, bring the asteroids, annihilate the planet, I will have this single thing for myself even if it destroys me._

 

“Sherlock,” she starts—

 

Sherlock closes her mouth over John’s.

 

 


End file.
